In the very near future, possibly as close as 2015, oil and gas drilling platforms at sea may be run by robots controlled and monitored remotely by humans safely ensconced somewhere on land. In a laboratory financed by Norsk Hydro, a simulated robotic drilling platform already exists to test systems and to prototype operations. Offshore oil and gas drilling is dangerous not only due to the confined space in which the heavy drilling equipment must operate, but also due to the variable weather conditions that can make human operation of these platforms problematic. And costly. Employing robotics to run the platforms will eliminate the risk to humans of running the platform, and also greatly reduce the cost associated with human operation. The insurance alone will be a tremendous savings. Additionally, robots will be much less susceptible to the extremes of weather and encounter fewer interruptions in operation. Though we’re still drilling for fossil fuels, this seems to be a much smarter and safer way to go about it. The utilization of robotics in an application such as this seems a logical extension of the technology, and a smart combination of automated robotic manufacturing with the use of remotely controlled robotics in high-danger scenarios such as urban warfare.
Clearly, we are very much at the beginning of the application of robotics technology in a diversity of industries, and this is partly because robotics technology is still in its infancy. But the technology advances exponentially, and we will begin to see robotics used in ways analogous to the automated oil platforms like mining, agriculture, firefighting and construction.
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